I much
enjoy the post-project tidiness phase: books back on shelves, scraps of yarn up
off floor, tools back in cupboard, notes and printed pattern if there is one
and swatch if there is one, in the “Knitting Actually Done” file in the
bedroom. I made a good start on skein-winding, and got back in the saddle,
sock-knitting-wise. Not as difficult as I thought.

A very
Happy Ninetieth Birthday to your father, Cat – although, by
now, most of it must be over Down There. I love the idea of the odd-ball
sweaters your mother knit for him, for gardening. Kaffe would approve.

I think I
have enough left over this time to do something for one of the Little Boys,
even though it won’t represent the Calcutta Cup. We’ll have to consider
that, when I see them at Easter. And the handing-over of Ed’s sweater will have
to wait until then, too. I don’t trust the Royal Mail.

All the
dimensions have emerged remarkably on target except length –it was two inches
too long. I got rid of one in the blocking. We should be together on the shores
of Loch Fyne long enough for me to shorten it if necessary (cutting off the
bottom, picking up stitches, knitting the ribbing downwards). I’ll take along
equipment. But I can’t take such drastic action until I see it on the man.

Tom Lehrer

If my 1954
self could have been told that she would pitch up in Edinburgh, she would have
been delighted – I came here first for a week of the Festival in ’53, and was
enchanted. And that she would have on her desk in 2013 a machine on which she
could hear and watch Tom Lehrer, and communicate (by simply typing) with people
anywhere in the world who also remembered him fondly… Preposterous, surely.

I doubt
very much whether I had even seen colour television, in 1954.

When I read
your comment, Knitlass,
about “everybody hates the Jews”, I felt sure it would have been airbrushed out
of the canon in these politically correct days. But I went to YouTube and typed
“Tom Lehrer everybody hates the Jews” into their search bar. At first I thought
I was right – “National
Brotherhood Week”, indeed. Just as I feared. But then I listened to it.
Please, everybody, have a look. Little has changed in the last 60 years.

And the
backs of those young heads in the foreground could have been me and my friends.
Was it filmed in the very theatre?